The term “Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation” (aka AMO) has been used to define the variation of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean. What did I mean in class when I said “it might not be real?” There is no doubt that the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean varies, and as we take and accumulate measurements we identify extended times when the ocean is warmer or cooler than average. When these data are plotted, we see these warmer and cooler time spans persist for a few tens of years; hence, a multi-decadal oscillation. The plot below is taken from a good article in Wikipedia, and the plot was made from data that is available at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory.

Figure 1: An area index that measures how much warmer or cooler the North Atlantic Ocean is from a long-term average (from Wikipedia). (The indices for the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation are not especially well documented in the web resources that even a reasonably informed practitioner can find. The indices tend to be averages of the Atlantic surface temperatures from somewhere in the deep tropics to Greenland. They are then subtracted from long-term means. The 20th century mean is used in some papers. This example demonstrates some of foibles of data, data documentation, and data presentation on the web.)

I want to revisit this figure that I use as a template to think about the natural science of the Earth’s climate.

Figure 2: A summary figure I use to organize the basics of climate science and global warming.

A focus on the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is most naturally categorized in Figure 2 as “internal variability.” When we talk about global warming in the past 100 years and the next 100 years, internal variability usually refers to states of the atmosphere and ocean that are persistent for some amount of time – weeks, months, years, decades. For example, in El Nino the temperature of the ocean in tropical eastern Pacific is warm and stays warm for a few months or more. Then in La NIna the eastern Pacific is cool and stays cool for a few months or more. There is an easy feeling of the Earth oscillating back and forth between the warm and cool times in the eastern Pacific Ocean. For El Nino and La Nina, there are many related changes in atmospheric circulation (the trade winds change) and precipitation (tropical convention moves east and west). All of these related changes fit together, and they describe the atmospheric and ocean behaving as a coherent system. This coherent behavior allows us to understand cause and effect; it allows the possibility for prediction.

On a scale of a million years, the cycles between the ice ages and temperate times might be internal variability. This would be related to, for example, carbon dioxide coming into and out of the ocean due to changes in temperature and biology. So far, I have been diligent not to call internal variability “natural variability.” El Nino and La Nina are “natural,” but that does not mean that their behavior will remain the same as the climate warms. To call internal variability “natural” suggests this idea of a “natural” and a “manmade” climate that are two different things, and this idea is clearly not the case. We have our climate, there is internal variability, there is manmade warming, and they all occur together, and they will change together.

The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is internal variability. When I stand in front of class and say the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation might not be real, I mean several things. At the foundation of my statement is that we don’t have this story of coherent behavior like we have in El Nino and La Nina; we don’t have a construction of the atmosphere and ocean behaving as a connected, dynamic system. In fact, I would argue that the issues I raise in the caption of Figure 1, for example mushy definitions of indices, indicate the challenges of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. We know there is a signal, but it is even hard to describe that signal very well. When we link back to cause and effect, one of the leading ideas is that it is related to subtle changes of global scale ocean circulation, which we neither model nor observe very well. So I don’t say that the signal of the temperature change is unreal, but I suggest that the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is not a coherent sloshing back and forth between warm and cold.

One reason we are interested in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation is that we know that there are strong relationships between the temperature of the ocean in the tropical North Atlantic and drought and flood in North America and Africa. We know that warm Atlantic sea surface temperature is very highly linked to hurricanes in the United States. One of the scientists most quoted as a skeptic of the science of global warming, Bill Gray, bases much of his climate change argument on the role of Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation as a proxy for global climate. (For those who are interested, go back to Forms of Argument, and look at the focus on isolated information and reliance in this case on the reality of a process that is both hard to model and observe. How does this stand up in the face of all that we can observe?)

The point of Aerosols implicated as a prime driver of twentieth-century North Atlantic climate variability by Ben Booth and coauthors is that temperature changes associated with different amounts of aerosols at different times can explain the majority of the variability observed in the temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean. Natural sources of aerosols include volcanoes, which cool the Earth’s surface. Other natural sources are salt and soil dust. Manmade aerosols include pollutants, soot, and soil dust. (old Rood blogs - Volcanoes and Long Cycles, and Black Carbon) What aerosols do is to change the absorption and reflection of solar radiation; the absorption and reflection of clouds; and how efficiently heat is held near the Earth’s surface. In the simulations by Booth and others, the predominant impact of aerosols is related to effects on solar radiation – both directly by reflection (volcanoes) and indirectly by changes to clouds. Earlier studies have investigated the effect of volcanoes, and this study brings to the forefront the importance of other sources of aerosols, many of them manmade, in modulating global climate with strong regional influences.

The numerical experiments in Booth et al. (2012) are well designed. But they are complex, and, well, numerical experiments. I hold such numerical experimentation as an important part of scientific methodology of the 21st century. They help us think in a field where our ability to execute controlled experiments is limited. To me, these experiments suggest a strong, well-based explanation of the variability of North Atlantic temperatures. However, scientific method requires more scrutiny, more use of observations, and independent verification of the results. But as it stands right now, we have at hand a plausible explanation of cause and effect that explains the majority of the observed variability.

To finish another long article – The work of Booth et al. (2012) extends back to 1860. The Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation extends back, well seemingly, at least 8000 years. In Nature Communications there is an article Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years by Mads Faurschou Knudsen and others (2011). This paper concludes that for most of the time since the last ice age ended, there has been a 50 – 70 year oscillation, which they attribute to atmospheric-oceanic coupled behavior modulated by variations in the orbit of the Earth. As I understand this paper, the authors tested whether or not variations in the Sun could explain their observed variability. Since solar variability did not explain their observations, they accepted the hypothesis that atmospheric-oceanic coupled behavior provided the explanation. They did not investigate the impact of aerosols.

As it stands in my mind today, the variability in the North Atlantic temperature behavior is strongly influenced by aerosols in the atmosphere and a trend due to increasing carbon dioxide. If there is oscillatory behavior in the temperature, it is due to increases and decreases in atmospheric aerosols, perhaps on top of a smaller atmospheric-oceanic dynamic variation that still requires explanation. A good step forward, I think.

Britain is colder than winter as the country faces a late spring washout weekend By Alistair Grant5:08PM BST 17 May 2012

After rain for the South and North and downpours for the Midlands on Friday the Met Office said heavy weekend showers will hit the South. Weather Channel forecaster Leon Brown said: “It’s cold in the North due to a plunge of Arctic air.”

Not even close. It's roughly a 1000-fold difference in yield between the Hiroshima bomb and the 20 megaton device. That means that 1,734,480,000 Hiroshima bombs would be roughly equivalent to 1,734,480 20 megaton bombs, not 1.3. That would also be equivalent to the heat released into the atmosphere by 3 El Nino events. Seems pretty significant to me. Also, an El Nino is just shuffling heat between compartments, not adding any energy to the system.

Think there's any chance that all of that heat being stored in the ocean is going to come back and kick our ass during the next intense El Nino?

Correct the heat is already here in climate system being shuffled back and fourth.However,it can't escape the climate system back to space due to the GHG blanket trapping the heat and so the ocean/land continues to warm more and more. My tunnel idea prevents that and allows the heat to escape back to space by lowering GHGs which means the blanket becomes thinner and it will allow more heat to re radiate back out to space thus allowing the planet to cool more effectively. Y'all with me yet?

Not even close. It's roughly a 1000-fold difference in yield between the Hiroshima bomb and the 20 megaton device. That means that 1,734,480,000 Hiroshima bombs would be roughly equivalent to 1,734,480 20 megaton bombs, not 1.3. That would also be equivalent to the heat released into the atmosphere by 3 El Nino events. Seems pretty significant to me. Also, an El Nino is just shuffling heat between compartments, not adding any energy to the system.

Think there's any chance that all of that heat being stored in the ocean is going to come back and kick our ass during the next intense El Nino?

Hmmm...You are correct. I was off by a factor of 1,000,000...good enough for government work, but I strive for a higher standard. I need to remember that bourbon got me through college; I should never try to do math sober.

Anyway, I'll edit my previous post. The total volume heat comparison of the 50-year difference vs a typical El Niño should be 1.3 million vs 500 thousand or, as you noted, just under the amount of heat released in three El Niño events. Still not all that impressed, but it is significantly greater than my previous numbers suggested.

"Think there's any chance that all of that heat being stored in the ocean is going to come back and kick our ass during the next intense El Nino?

I'm certain that this is a rhetorical question, but the clear answer to this would be: Of course not. There is no reason to think that the next El Niño will be anything unusual, as far as I know. If anything, we have to wonder if we aren't entering a period of more frequent La Niñas and less frequent El Niños due to a shift in the PDO.

Actually, to further illustrate how small a "Hiroshima bomb" is meteorologically, see the following:

"According to NOVA, a program devoted to science on Public Broadcasting System, the amount of energy in a typical El Ni&ntildeo is immense. In order to warm that much water of the Pacific ocean by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, it would take more than a million power plants - 1,000 megawatts each - running full throttle for a year. That's as much energy produced by half a million 20 megaton hydrogen bombs. In other words, it's more energy than what has been burned by fossil fuels in the U.S. since the beginning of the century."

Quoting Neapolitan:That's two Hiroshima-level bombs every second for 55 years. That's the rough equivalent of 1,734,480,000 bomb's worth of heat that's gone into the water.

Still unimpressed?

Quoting sirmaelstrom:[...]It would seem to me that the volume average temperature change is a better way to for the average person to understand the amount of heat referred to, rather than the "Hiroshima bomb" metric. The latter seems to be used more to play up to people's fears concerning nuclear energy; that, and the fact that it is a very small unit of energy relative to what is being measured here, and facilitates the use of very large numbers to foster alarm.[...]

I'm really not that impressed, actually. If anything, the volume temperature changes of 0.18&degC and 0.09&degC lead me to believe that the ocean has a larger capacity to store heat than I would have thought previously.

Thanks for helping me illustrate my point about using small units to generate large numbers in order to create alarm though.

A "Hiroshima bomb" really is a pretty small amount of energy in meteorological terms, especially on a global scale. I was reading the other day about how the average energy of a typical thunderstorm is equal to about 50 "Hiroshima bombs" (Sourced here; not the place I read it, but has the same claim). It would seem to me that the volume average temperature change is a better way to for the average person to understand the amount of heat referred to, rather than the "Hiroshima bomb" metric. The latter seems to be used more to play up to people's fears concerning nuclear energy; that, and the fact that it is a very small unit of energy relative to what is being measured here, and facilitates the use of very large numbers to foster alarm.

I probably won't be on much today, as we have a very long journey to some friends' for a cookout this afternoon--a round trip of almost 60 billion micrometres! Seeing how gasoline is still near $1.5x10²⁸ per cubic ångstrom, I may have to take out a loan!

That's two Hiroshima-level bombs every second for 55 years. That's the rough equivalent of 1,734,480,000 bomb's worth of heat that's gone into the water.

Quoting Xandra:Here is the change in volume mean temperature for the 0-700 m layer for the World Ocean and individual basins as determined by the linear trend for the 1955-2010 period, according to Levitus et al. (2012):

A "Hiroshima bomb" really is a pretty small amount of energy in meteorological terms, especially on a global scale. I was reading the other day about how the average energy of a typical thunderstorm is equal to about 50 "Hiroshima bombs" (Sourced here; not the place I read it, but has the same claim). It would seem to me that the volume average temperature change is a better way to for the average person to understand the amount of heat referred to, rather than the "Hiroshima bomb" metric. The latter seems to be used more to play up to people's fears concerning nuclear energy; that, and the fact that it is a very small unit of energy relative to what is being measured here, and facilitates the use of very large numbers to foster alarm.

I probably won't be on much today, as we have a very long journey to some friends' for a cookout this afternoon--a round trip of almost 60 billion micrometres! Seeing how gasoline is still near $2.5x10&sup3&deg per solar mass, I may have to take out a loan!

Edited: Ha! I screwed up the math the first time. I chose a tiny metric for amount of gasoline when I should have chosen a very large one, in order to make the dollar value enormous...I've just corrected it.

Quoting Xandra:Here is the change in volume mean temperature for the 0-700 m layer for the World Ocean and individual basins as determined by the linear trend for the 1955-2010 period, according to Levitus et al. (2012):

Quoting JupiterKen:You do realize this amount of increased energy heated the ocean .09 deg C in the 55 year time period.

Here is the change in volume mean temperature for the 0-700 m layer for the World Ocean and individual basins as determined by the linear trend for the 1955-2010 period, according to Levitus et al. (2012):

Quoting TemplesOfSyrinxC4:I have all plus 0 on all of my posts and half of them wind up getting removed by the monolithic lock-stepping borg collective anti-human tribe here by mashing the minus and exclamation mark buttons till their collectivist heart is content thinking they're really accomplishing something, I'll just C&P every post I make, and if I deem the post removal to be unwarranted under the rules of the road community standards, I will immediately repost the comment, and there's nothing you neo-malthusians can do to stop it, so there!

You know, it's almost hard to believe that any monolithic lock-stepping borg collective anti-human neo-malthuisian tribe member would deign to minus insightful commentary such as this... :-\

Arctic Sea ice area continues to shrink at a historic clip. After all that silly talk about a "recovery", ice is melting incredibly fast. In fact, SIA dropped below 11 million km2 yesterday--the same day it did so in 2007, and just a few days after it did last year.

From 1979 through 2012, it's taken an average of 82 days for SIA to drop from its maximum to below 11 million km2. Over the last ten years (2002-2011) it's averaged less time, just 74 days. But this year it's done so in a remarkable 50 days--by far the quickest ever (the previous record was 62 days in 2003).

Changes in frequencies of storms in the Midwest, by category of storm size for five decades, 1961-1970 through 2001-2010. Labeled changes are for the last decade. Comparisons are to frequencies in 1961-1990.

The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and Natural Resources Defense Council have released a new report, Doubled Trouble: More Midwestern Extreme Storms, which starkly documents how much heavy precipitation has increased in the Midwest and sheds new light on the devastating and costly floods that have hammered the region, especially in recent years.

New RMCO analysis of a half century of precipitation data across the Midwest, defined as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, indicates the region has had an increasing number of large storms since 1961. The largest of storms—those of three inches or more of precipitation in a single day—have increased the most, with their annual frequency more than doubling over the past 51 years. The frequencies of all large storms, especially the largest, have particularly spiked this century.

[…]

The report also presents new evidence linking extreme storms in the Midwest to major floods, the region's most costly regularly ocurring natural disasters. The new analysis shows that the two worst years in the Midwest for storms of three inches or more per day were 2008 and 1993, the years with the Midwest's worst floods in some 80 years, which caused $16 billion and $33 billion in damages and rank among the nation's worst natural disasters. The report presents new evidence linking the 2008 flooding to extreme storms, showing that, in areas with the worst flooding, 48% of the local precipitation came from extreme storms.

As Stephen Saunders, president of RMCO and the report's primary author, said: “Global studies already show that human-caused climate change is driving more extreme precipitation, and now we’ve documented how great the increase has been in the Midwest and linked the extreme storms to flooding in the region. A threshold may already have been crossed, so that major floods in the Midwest perhaps now should no longer be considered purely natural disasters but instead mixed natural/unnatural disasters. And if emissions keep going up, the forecast is for more extreme storms in the region.”

Global warming contrarians remind the public that the world has not warmed all that much, if at all, during the past decade or so. But that's the atmosphere. Oceanographers with their thermometers in Earth's biggest reservoir of heat—the world's ocean—report in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters that greenhouse warming has in fact been proceeding apace the past decade, not to mention the past half century. Ninety-three percent of the heat trapped by increasing greenhouse gases goes into warming the ocean, not the atmosphere. So taking the ocean's temperature is the most comprehensive way to monitor global warming. A group of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists has revised and updated their decade-old compilation of temperature measurements from the upper 2000 meters of the world's ocean. Its store of heat (red line with error bars) steadily increased over the past 20 years. And the upper ocean has warmed so much in the past 50 years that its added heat would be enough to warm the lower atmosphere by about 36°C (thankfully a physically impossible feat).

- A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat contentsince 1955- One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean- The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs

Added:

Total heat content change from 1961 to 2011 is approximately 21 x 1022 joules and this is 210000000000000000000000 joules (a joule is 1 watt for 1 second - a 100 watt light bulb will use 100 joules in 1 second). This is a rate of heating of 133 Terawatts (0.261 Watts/m2). 133 Terrawatts is 2 Hiroshima bombs a second. Continually since 1961.

The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.

In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.

"Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region," said the study's lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.

The climate reconstruction was done in 3,000 different ways and concluded with 95% accuracy that no other period in the past 1,000 years match or exceeded post-1950 warming in Australia.

The study, published in the Journal of Climate, will be part of Australia's contribution to the fifth Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change report, due in 2014.

As part of the study, climate modellers used the natural data to analyse the impact of both natural events, like volcanic eruptions in the pre-industrial era, and the impact of human-induced climate change such as greenhouse gasses emissions on temperatures in the last millennium.

Dr Steven Phipps, from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who carried out the modeling, said the study demonstrated strong human influence on the climate in the region.

"The models showed that prior to 1850 there were not any long-term trends and temperature variations were likely to be caused by natural climate variability which is a random process," he said.

"But [the modeling showed] 20th-century warming significantly exceeds the amplitude of natural climate variability and demonstrates that the recent warming experience in Australia is unprecedented within the context of the last millennium."

Annual average daily maximum temperatures in Australia have increased by 0.75C since 1910. Since the 1950s each decade has been warmer than the one before it.

Australia's peak scientific body, the CSIRO, has said temperatues will rise by between 1C and 5C by 2070 when compared with recent decades. It predicts the number of droughts in southern Australia will increase in the future and that there will be an increase in intense rainfall in many areas.

Yeah that Alex Jones stuff he linked last winter was crazy. Alex Jones is probably the most prominent anti-Semite on the internet too.

Fledermaus Scheise verruckt he was.

Quoting AlwaysThinkin:

Temple decided to spam the blog with Alex Jones and John Birch society conspiracy stuff with whole articles from each place. Dunno if Dr. Rood got rid of it or someone had enough and reported his posts. It was getting somewhat grating so I'm glad it was done.

Quoting BaltimoreBrian:All these gaps in the numbers of the blog comments. What happened?

Temple decided to spam the blog with Alex Jones and John Birch society conspiracy stuff with whole articles from each place. Dunno if Dr. Rood got rid of it or someone had enough and reported his posts. It was getting somewhat grating so I'm glad it was done.

Global warming contrarians remind the public that the world has not warmed all that much, if at all, during the past decade or so. But that's the atmosphere. Oceanographers with their thermometers in Earth's biggest reservoir of heat—the world's ocean—report in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters that greenhouse warming has in fact been proceeding apace the past decade, not to mention the past half century. Ninety-three percent of the heat trapped by increasing greenhouse gases goes into warming the ocean, not the atmosphere. So taking the ocean's temperature is the most comprehensive way to monitor global warming. A group of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists has revised and updated their decade-old compilation of temperature measurements from the upper 2000 meters of the world's ocean. Its store of heat (red line with error bars) steadily increased over the past 20 years. And the upper ocean has warmed so much in the past 50 years that its added heat would be enough to warm the lower atmosphere by about 36°C (thankfully a physically impossible feat).

- A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat contentsince 1955- One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean- The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs

Added:

Total heat content change from 1961 to 2011 is approximately 21 x 1022 joules and this is 210000000000000000000000 joules (a joule is 1 watt for 1 second - a 100 watt light bulb will use 100 joules in 1 second). This is a rate of heating of 133 Terawatts (0.261 Watts/m2). 133 Terrawatts is 2 Hiroshima bombs a second. Continually since 1961.

Quoting NeapolitanFan:Want to know why the climate hucksters still can't find the "missing heat" in the oceans? Because it never existed in the first place:Link

Posted in a previous entry, April 23, 2012:

From ScienceNOW:

No Letup in World's Warming

Global warming contrarians remind the public that the world has not warmed all that much, if at all, during the past decade or so. But that's the atmosphere. Oceanographers with their thermometers in Earth's biggest reservoir of heat—the world's ocean—report in a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters that greenhouse warming has in fact been proceeding apace the past decade, not to mention the past half century. Ninety-three percent of the heat trapped by increasing greenhouse gases goes into warming the ocean, not the atmosphere. So taking the ocean's temperature is the most comprehensive way to monitor global warming. A group of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists has revised and updated their decade-old compilation of temperature measurements from the upper 2000 meters of the world's ocean. Its store of heat (red line with error bars) steadily increased over the past 20 years. And the upper ocean has warmed so much in the past 50 years that its added heat would be enough to warm the lower atmosphere by about 36°C (thankfully a physically impossible feat).

- A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat contentsince 1955- One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean- The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs

Added:

Total heat content change from 1961 to 2011 is approximately 21 x 1022 joules and this is 210000000000000000000000 joules (a joule is 1 watt for 1 second - a 100 watt light bulb will use 100 joules in 1 second). This is a rate of heating of 133 Terawatts (0.261 Watts/m2). 133 Terrawatts is 2 Hiroshima bombs a second. Continually since 1961.

There are no citations for the article and all of the other links are to other "articles" on The Hockey Schtick. ... Did you peer review this yourself? That would certainly add more credence to it. ;-)

The paper referenced by the article is peer-reviewed; it has no citations yet, but it was also just published today.

As to the content, the abstract and accompanying graphs are interesting, however the full paper is behind a paywall.

There are no citations for the article and all of the other links are to other "articles" on The Hockey Schtick. ... Did you peer review this yourself? That would certainly add more credence to it. ;-)

Adding yet more hard science to climate change theory, a peer-reviewed article just published by the AMS strongly suggests that Australia's recent warming is, indeed, AGW. From the abstract:

"This study presents the first multi-proxy warm season (September-February) temperature reconstruction for the combined land and oceanic region of Australasia (0°S-50°S, 110°E-180°E). We perform a 3000-member ensemble Principal Component Reconstruction (PCR) using 27 temperature proxies from the region. The proxy network explained 69% of the inter-annual variance in the HadCRUT3v SONDJF spatial mean temperature over the 1921-1990 calibration period. Applying eight stringent reconstruction ‘reliability’ metrics identified post A.D. 1430 as the highest quality section of the reconstruction, but also revealed a skilful reconstruction is possible over the full A.D. 1000-2001 period.

The average reconstructed temperature anomaly in Australasia during A.D. 1238-1267, the warmest 30-year pre-instrumental period, is 0.09°C (±0.19°C) below 1961-1990 levels. Following peak pre-industrial warmth, a cooling trend culminates in a temperature anomaly of 0.44°C (±0.18°C) below 1961-1990 levels between A.D. 1830-1859. A preliminary assessment of the roles of solar, volcanic, and anthropogenic forcings and natural ocean-atmosphere variability is performed using CSIRO Mk3L model simulations and independent palaeoclimate records. Solar and volcanic forcing does not have a marked influence on reconstructed Australasian temperature variations, which appear to be masked by internal variability.

In 94.5% of the 3000-member reconstruction ensemble, there are no other warm periods in the past 1,000 years that match or exceed post-1950 warming observed in Australasia. The unusual 20th century warming cannot be explained by natural variability alone, suggesting a strong influence of anthropogenic forcing in the Australasian region"

IOW: it's not sunspots; it's not volcanoes; it's not AMO or PDO or ENSO or any other natural variation. It's us.

Quoting TemplesOfSyrinxC4:WWF Calls For Global Poverty To Save The Planet

If you aren't going to post your own material could you at least limit what you are going to quote to a paragraph or two with the article title and a link? Most people here do it on either side of the debate.

Quoting TemplesOfSyrinxC4:WWF Calls For Global Poverty To Save The Planet

Part of elite’s.......s the real agenda behind the WWF’s touchy-feely “green” veneer.The true purpose of the organization is to advance the arcane, authoritarian, and oppressive pseudo-science of eugenics behind the thin veil of environmental advocacy

Still not answering, Temple:

1. Start with yuor claim about an acid trip. Yes / No, what is it today?

2. Then go through all your absurd claims about world government, etc.. You are cutting and pasting stuff and ignoring anyone who claims different. Witness your claims about Italy which you ran away from when challenged. add to that the fact that there are many much more efficient mechanisms for all the conspiracies that you claim: greed, good will, stupidity, etc.

3. You ignore all the claims about big oil, patriot act, or other power grabs and focus on some mythical conservationist conspiracy.

4. You are now claiming a global warming conspiracy. Yet you don't explain any of the global warming data. what is your position: is it happening or not?

5. If it is happening, you should realize that conservationists are trying to keep the world free. If it goes to crisis, it won't be a bunch of academics and hippies running the world, it will be either people like dick cheney or it will be anarchy. If you have never expereinced anarchy, go to Haiti and live in the slums for a while. I guarantee you will br crying for a government that tells you what school to send your kid to.

6. All your furturism is shite. Simply it is. If you want to seriously debate furutism. then fine. But don't throw around a bunch of references to big names. Do it with simple words, clarity and honesty.

Personally, I don't think you have any integrity and are scared to actually try to develop real scenarios. As i said, debating the Loch Ness monster is much more fun for some people than trying to save the whales.